The Los Angeles Opera’s co-production of Mozart’s The Abduction From the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), which closed February 19th, updated the action of this singspiel from its original mid- to late-18th century Ottoman Turkish setting, when the Ottoman...
Cry the Occupied Country – Figaro’s Dance and A Countess’s Lament
Do you ever wonder what happened to the Occupy moment? We can’t really call it a movement because it had no coherent program, plan or organization, no well defined or articulated policy (or revolutionary) objectives; and its only concrete target was a somewhat...
Figaro “Unbound”—but undocumented: ¡Figaro! (90210)
It’s been said that The Marriage of Figaro (or, more precisely, The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro, as it was originally titled) was one of the first nails in the coffin of the ancien régime. Its author, the playwright, musician, watch-maker (and inventor),...
Some Enchanted Evening – Così fan tutte
Mozart, like other great artists before and since, offers us a topological mirror in which to test and tease our perspectives on the universe and our fragile foothold in it. The evocative power of his greatest work is a sublime irony, felt all the more acutely as the...